Background

International extension of Unidata packages and services began in
earnest with the UOP Director-funded, joint Unidata/COMET
MeteoForum pilot project. Unidata products (especially the
netCDF) and services were used internationally before
MeteoForum, but there was no concerted effort expended to
advertise/promote our offerings.

The MeteoForum vision was originally articulated in the 2001
Fulker/Spangler proposal submitted in application for UCAR Director's
Opportunity Funding (Jack Fellows):

MeteoForum - An International Network of Meteorological
Training Centers for the 21st Century

"The MeteoForum pilot project will include a small group of educational
institutions (some universities and some WMO RMTCs) that are motivated
to enhance the contributions of modern meteorology in their regions.
Participants will be expected to have relatively fast Internet access,
appropriate computers, and suitable personnel. Some of these personnel
will be trained to run MeteoForum software on their computers so as to
to access real-time data, training materials, and other resources.
Where practical, participants in the MeteoForum pilot also will
contribute real-time data and educational resources to the
effort. By integrating these elements, the pilot project will serve as
a model on which to build a full-scale international MeteoForum.
Initially, the MeteoForum pilot project will build upon capabilities
now offered in the U.S. by the government-sponsored COMET and
Unidata programs"

NB: MeteoForum funding has long been exhausted.

The continuing international activities at the UPC are best
characterized as a natural extension of our outreach activities to the
higher education research and education communities.

Recent International Activities of Note

Unidata, in conjunction with the Universidade de São Paulo's
(USP's) Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências
Atmosféricas (IAG) hosted a Latin American Data
Workshop on August 21-23, 2008 in the IAG facilities on the
USP campus in São Paulo, Brazil.

The goals of the workshop were to:

Foster scientific partnerships for exchanging knowledget and
expertise among U.S. and Latin American educators and
researchers

Promote greater Latin American participation in free-and-open
sharing of Earth System data

Inform Latin American workshop participants of the suite of
freely-available analysis and display applications available
through Unidata

The workshop was a combination of plenary, break-out and
hands-on/demonstration sessions that focused on:

Use of the Unidata LDM to connect to the IDD/IDD-Brazil data
sharing networks

Use of Unidata's TDS and McIDAS' ADDE capabilities for remote
serving-of and access-to data

Availability of real-time GOES imagery (imager and sounder),
especially South American coverage from GOES-10

Availability of high resolution, global GFS model data in the
IDD CONDUIT datastream

availability of COSMIC global radio occultation (limb sounding)
data by the LDM

Availability of global observational data in the IDD IDS|DDPLUS
datastream

Strategies for sharing of locally-held datasets of general
interest

The workshop was composed of 45 representatives from 18 organizations
in 6 countries in the Western Hemisphere.

The U.S. was represented at the workshop by:

Jennifer Collins - University of South Florida, Department of Geography

Elen Cutrim - Western Michigan University, Department of Geography

Mohan Ramamurthy - UCAR/Unidata

Chris Rocken - UCAR/COSMIC

Tom Whittaker - University of Wisconsin, SSEC/CIMSS

Tom Yoksas - UCAR/Unidata

A follow-on to AGU 2006 and 2007 Spring Joint Assemblies
Cyberinfrastructure sessions was held at the AGU 2008
Spring Joint Assembly scheduled for May 27-30 in
Ft. Lauderdale, FL. The theme of the Joint Assembly was
A Meeting of the
Americas

The theme of the session, jointly convened by Tom Yoksas
(Unidata), Glenn Rutledge (NOAA/NOMADS), Elen Cutrim (Western
Michigan University), and Luis Farfan (CICESE, Baja,
Mexico), was the same as the sessions in the previous Joint
Assemblies:

The AGU 2009 Spring Joint Assembly will be held on 24-27 May in
Toronto, Canada.

The 2010 Spring Joint Assembly will be held on 8-13 August in
Iguassu Falls, Brazil.

Unidata is collaborating with a variety of groups within NCAR/UCAR
to obtain funding, under the UCAR Africa Initiative umbrella,
to develop an prototype system that can be used for the management
of disease.

The overall goal of the proposal is to develop, with West
African partners, a prototype Earth-gauge system that
integrates weather and health data and uses that integrated
data in the management of disease. This prototype will be used
for on-the-ground decision support in managing meningitis, as a
vehicle for enhancing the capacity of West African
meteorological centers, and as a way of enhancing connections
between the health and weather/climate communities. This
prototype will also be a pioneering node in a larger
Earth-gauge system that integrates weather,
environmental-conservation, health, and societal development
data and analysis tools in a transparent framework that enables
people everywhere to participate in a global learning community
and find multiple solutions to the major climate-change
adaptation challenges to be faced by humanity in the 21st
century.

Unidata (Yoksas) conducted a McIDAS Training Workshop at the CPTEC
installation in Cacheoira Paulista, SP, Brazil in early
December, 2007. Unidata participation was funded by CPTEC.

Unidata is playing an active role in the joint
UCAR - AAAS Africa Initiative that was inaugurated in Summer, 2006.
As part of this initiative, a workshop was convened in
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on April 2-6, 2007. Details of the
the conference can be found in:

As the UCAR-AAAS Africa Initiative evolves, it is expected that
interest in Unidata product offerings will grow in Africa.

the IDD-Brazil, inaugurated in December,
2003, continues to expand in South America AND has recently
been extended into Africa. At least 26 IDD nodes at 12 institutions
are participating in the IDD-Brazil and reporting statistics back
to the UPC.

Some Brazilian participants:

INPE/CPTEC - top level relay and data injection node
(INPE is the Brazilian equivalent of NASA; CPTEC runs
models operationally for Brazil in a role that is similar
to NCEP's role in the US)

Many of these institutions began participating as a result of
the Unidata/CPTEC/UFRJ presence at the XIII Congresso
Brasileiro de Meteorologia (CBMET, the 13th Brazilian
Meteorological Congress) in September 2004. Presentations by
active IDD-Brazil participants at the 2006
CBMET in Florianopolis, Brazil continue to increase interest in
Latin America. Follow-on presentations made at a conference in
Cabo Verda in March, 2008, Africa should further increase
interest in Unidata offerings in Africa.

Since joining the IDD/IDD-Brazil in summer, 2005, the
Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) has been actively using
real-time data visualized by GEMPAK in the classroom and
for research.

The Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) is actively involved in connecting
to Internet2. I2 access will allow high resolution model data to
be delivered and used for local and regional modeling efforts (e.g.,
WRF). The UCR will also then be in a position to assume a leading
role in the distribution of realtime weather data throughout
Central America. Establishment of this capability will be the
cornerstone for he envisioned IDD-Caribe.

Collaborations

Unidata agreed to act as a primary backup for GOES-East imagery for
RAMSDIS installations in Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Honduras, and Panama. This arrangement came about because of GOES-East
ingest problems at the National Weather Service in Costa Rica (the
site where all of the Central American RAMSDIS installations get
GOES-East imagery), and because a desire to establish better
relationships with WMO's Virtual Laboratory effort.

Collaborations with EUMETSAT aimed at promoting use of remote access
methodologies (ADDE and THREDDS), first in Darmstadt and then
in member states, have resulted in free ADDE access to
real-time METEOSAT-8 data (after users register with EUMETSAT)
for research and training. EUMETSAT personnel (Marianne
Koenig) reported on the status of this effort at the Spring
2006 AGU Joint Assembly held Baltimore, MD in May.

INPE/CPTEC is ingesting GOES-10 data at their installation
in Cachoeira Paulista, SP, Brazil. NOAA offered CPTEC the full
suite of processing software used for GOES-East/West imagery.
Since that GOES processing software is McIDAS-based, CPTEC
invited Unidata staff to visit Cachoeira Paulista and hold a focused
McIDAS training workshop. The workshop was held in early December,
2007.

INPE/CPTEC is converting satellite
imagery captured by its TeraScan (tm) system to McIDAS AREA
format. Recent UPC evaluations of the images being produced by
CPTEC shows a systematic navigation error in each band. CPTEC
is aware of the problem and is working to correct it.
The UPC received the the CPTEC code and it passed it on to
SSEC/CIMSS and SSEC/AMRC community members for evaluation.

MeteoForum. This collaboration resulted in the creation in the
active
South American extension of the IDD, the IDD-Brazil.
This effort captured and still holds the interest in the highest
levels in Brazilian meteorological circles. More
information on the IDD-Brazil can be found in the
International status report.